Delia Derbyshire Electronic Music Pioneer at the BBC

Nov 20

Written By Iain

Delia Derbyshire started experimenting with tape loops and experimental sounds in the late 50's at the BBC with the Radiophonic Workshop. This was pre synth so every sound was meticulously made by hand. Her main focus was theory and perception of sound. She composed the original Dr.Who theme and worked on various electronica projects. Unfortunately she gave up on electronic music when the synthesizers started to be more widespread. She thought of here work as obsolete since now anyone can just hit a key to get an electronic sound that she had to work so hard to perfect.

This blog post does not do her justice so read about her here.

http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Derbyshire

Early Reel-to-Reel Beat Matching Virtuosa Delia at work.